Pleasant Words Won't Protect Us

Pleasant Words Won't Protect Us

Here’s something that shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been paying attention. A new poll has found that 13 percent of Britain’s 1.6 million Muslims believe the four Islamic homicide bombers who killed 52 people in London last July 7 should be regarded as martyrs.

13 percent of 1.6 million is two million, 80 thousand fanatics. About seven percent of them also think, according to the poll, that it’s permissible to attack civilians in some circumstances.

Prime Minister Tony Blair again made the predictable and increasingly irrelevant claim that such attitudes do not represent “the true face of Islam.” Maybe and maybe not. But when two million 80 thousand think it does, you have a serious problem that nice talk won’t cure.

After the London bombings, the British media were full of quotes from people who were shocked that people reared in Britain could attack their fellow countrymen. I wasn’t shocked. Such is the infection of radical Islam. If the British are serious, they’ll deport the extremists and close the mosques and schools that preach and teach hatred and violence. That will work. Nice talk won’t.

Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C.